Caliphate

Nuremberg, Federal Republic of Germany,

11 September, 2016

A glass of a clear liquor grasped in one hand, Gabi switched channels from one covering a Moslem march in Paris to another showing a similar celebration in Berlin. Ghastly, she thought. Simply ghastly to be celebrating the murders of four million people. What kinds of terrible oppression must those poor people have suffered to make them so vindictive?

It was all too distasteful. Gabi switched channels yet again, this time to CNN International. That was, in its way, far worse.

The big story on CNN was the rise of a new political party in the United States, Pat Buckman's new Wake Up, America Party was sucking voters and contributors from the Republicans and Democrats like the Sahara would suck moisture from a sponge. Worse, senators, congressmen, and state governors were likewise defecting. CNN's commentators were actually concerned that the lunatic might win the election in a couple of months. And that just doesn't bear thinking about.

Whether it bore thinking about or not, though, Gabi couldn't quite tear her eyes from the screen nor switch channels yet again. Why? Because the image was one remarkably frightening to the modern German soul. There was a march there, too. Instead of disarmed rabble chanting slogans, however, this march showed thousands of armed, disciplined men and women, in ranks, under what appeared to be their old officers and NCOs. They sang as they marched, past the old Iwo Jima Memorial, over the bridge across the Potomac, and on into Washington in complete violation of that city's ordinances.

And the police did nothing, so said the commentators. How can that be? Gabi wondered. Don't they know, haven't they learned from our history, what that means?

CNN said there were other marches taking place in the United States. None of those were in Boston, Los Angeles, or Kansas City, of course. Those cities had ceased to exist. But in Houston? In Chicago? In Nashville and Atlanta and a score or more others? Men and women marched and sang and chanted for revenge.